Vote to Contain Trump and Slap Sense Into GOP

I have already followed my advice -- to vote for Democrats or independents when possible and abstain otherwise -- in early voting. I agree with Peter Schwartz, who made that case clearly and economically recently on his Substack, where he concluded:

Republicans are now in thrall to Trump. They make possible his dismissal of legal constraints. The only way to neutralize Trump, then, is through a Congress controlled by Democrats. Yes, even if they are "democratic socialists." A president aided in his refusal to acknowledge the rule of law by an acquiescent Congress, is a far greater threat than legislators who want to enact socialized medicine or a ban on gasoline-powered cars.

If I were to point a voter to one piece, that would be it, but two others, both by conservative outlets, that could nevertheless appear side-by-side as a point-counterpoint can also help.

Interestingly for the pair, the one making the case for voting Republican will, upon further reflection on what the Republicans have done under Trump, really just seal the case for voting for the Democrats, as awful as they are.

The pro-Republican piece paints an ugly, but realistic picture of what the Democrats will try to do if they win and -- as they always do -- pretend they have a radical mandate:

Nor is it merely those who fly under the DSA flag who indicate that their desire is really to permanently end the American system. Dan McLaughlin of National Review may be a little bit squishy to some readers, but he acknowledged the truth of this when he recently tweeted: "The single, overriding question of our politics is whether Democrats will shatter our constitutional order in 2029-30. All other questions are secondary."

A win in the midterms will be the beginning of this shattering. 2028 presidential contender Kamala Harris said in an interview this week that if Democrats take control of Congress, they ought to begin by packing the Supreme Court, doing away with the Electoral College...

This is ugly indeed, and these are all things I have stood against for my entire adult life.

It's too bad that, as National Review Online points out in "A List of Things Democrats Might Do if They Retake Power," the Republicans have been doing these very things to a degree the DSA could only dream of.

Here are just four of them, with links included:

1. Blowing out the national debt on a party-line vote that bypasses the Senate filibuster.
2. Threatening to eliminate the filibuster entirely to shove through partisan legislation.
3. Threatening to remove judges who rule against the party in power.
4. Openly circumventing Supreme Court decisions through extralegal executive actions.

There are twenty-one more of these. Please take your time to read them if you are still considering a vote to continue enabling Trump -- of whom I would be a huge fan if I were a leftist.

America once had a party of intrusive government and a party that at least tried to get in its way. We now have two anti-freedom parties of intrusive government.

In addition to the urgent need to bring Trump under some kind of control, this election could represent the opportunity to send the GOP a message. If there is any chance of shocking the Republican party into remembering that its boss is the American People, and not Donald Trump, and recalling the principles that brought them success -- as imperfectly as they understood or applied them -- this election is that chance.

-- CAV

Freedom Four

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "Vance Can't Define Socialism Because He Agrees With Its Core Premise," by Agustina Vergara Cid (The Orange County Register):

The vice president's "definition" of socialism drew criticism. Some critics have pointed out that Vance's own policies often overlap with socialism, suggesting that he defines the term by what he personally finds objectionable. The overlap between Vance's nationalism and socialism is real. They are rival versions of the same core premise: that the group supersedes the individual. Vance can't define socialism because he can't name its core premise without condemning his own.

830 words/5 minutes

2. "5 Questions for ... Amesh Adalja, MD" (interview), by Fran Kritz, Meaghan Lee Callaghan, and Amesh Adalja (Infectious Disease Special Edition):

IDSE: As an infectious disease physician, what data are you reviewing about vaccines?

Dr. Adalja: I look at the original data in papers coming out in medical journals. I look at consensus statements coming out from medical organizations who are synthesizing that data.

But infectious disease doctors aren't the ones actually giving vaccinations. Primary care doctors are, and they often look at the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and CDC, both which, I believe, are now delegitimized due to leadership...

1170 words/4 minutes

3. "CEOs Under the Trump Administration Explode the Myth of Plutocracy" (2025), by Ben Bayer (The Hill):

If CEOs know these tariffs are threatening their own businesses, why don't they speak up? Why are these "plutocrats" so passive?

The author of the Journal report offers a simple explanation: "They're scared. They're worried they're going to be targeted, they're worried their businesses are going to suffer."

Indeed, they have much to fear.

820 words/3 minutes

4. "Jonathan Hoenig: Chicago, Capitalism, and the Art of Investing" (interview) by Scott Holleran and Jonathan Hoenig (Classic Chicago Magazine):

Scott Holleran: ... What are your thoughts on Chicago's history in American finance and are you bullish on Chicago's future?

Jonathan Hoenig: Yeah. Chicago's influence in finance, particularly in futures, options and derivatives, that's where there's been so much growth in markets in recent years. Chicago pioneered that. So much of what Chicago did East Coast [types] said couldn't be done. The results of Chicago's contributions to financial markets are better -- much better -- markets worldwide. Thanks to Chicago, people can protect themselves from all types of business risk, everything from the economy slowing to crops failing and weather events. Chicago's always had that reputation -- that reality of being a pioneer in helping people manage risk. Hedging and trading futures is commonplace now. Chicago led the way at a time few thought it would catch on. So, yeah, I am bullish on Chicago.

3750 words/12 minutes

-- CAV

When a Gesture Isn't Just Polite

In the process of settling a bet on post-election phone calls, Miss Manners makes the following important point:

The problem is that you both look at the call as a personal interaction, rather than a professional one. The reason the loser calls the winner is that it increases faith in the electoral process by having the loser acknowledge defeat, a relevant lesson in our time.

It is hardly surprising that in a time when too many Americans seem to have forgotten in what way our government is distinct, and why that difference matters, that lots of us see failure to make that call as merely rude.

It is not: It is negligent at best, and can indeed an attack, however small, on public confidence in the electoral process -- the hiring process, if you will -- by which we choose not our rulers, but the fellow citizens to whom we delegate the power of government.

We can all think of a particularly egregious example of someone failing spectacularly to acknowledge defeat. This person, and many others like him are not merely rude, or stubborn. They are dangerous, and must be stopped.

-- CAV

The 'Normie' Bubble

The headline in the Washington Examiner sounds encouraging enough: "The MAGA bubble is about to burst."

It's about time! anyone not inside said bubble will doubtless think.

Intrigued, and having doubts, I read the piece. My summary verdict is that it made lots of interesting observations, but that the headline would have been more accurate with ... for now appended.

The author, Peter Laffin, makes lots of interesting comparisons between MAGA and the "Democrats" (really, the woke left, who control that party as MAGA controls the GOP), and concludes that they are both "bubbles" that look outlandish to "normal people." For example:

The woke-era Democratic bubble proved remarkably durable, surviving one reality check after another for over a decade: Brexit, Donald Trump’s 2016 win, the backlash to “defund the police,” COVID restrictions, the parent revolt against indoctrination, to name a few.

2024 punctured it. Trump’s comeback from the depths of Jan. 6 to the heights of a popular vote victory couldn’t be spun or explained away. Democrats had to face it.

As they searched their souls, Trump stormed into Washington and had his way with it. And it didn’t take him long to alienate the voters who had just handed him a mandate to clean up the Democrats’ mess. Chaotic ICE raids, whiplash tariffs, a ballroom funded by companies with business before the government, a military parade on his birthday, a $400 million gift jet from Qatar, pardons for the Jan. 6 rioters: the list of self-inflicted wounds goes on. [bold added]

An important piece of context worth remembering here is that Joe Biden was elected in the first place under the disingenuous promise (by his party)/actual mandate (from the electorate) of piloting a return to normalcy after Trump's lunatic first term.

We all know what happened there, and we should remember that.

Laffin further elaborates on what his idea of a bubble means and what will likely happen next:

Just as Democrats lost sight of how off-putting they became through land acknowledgments, talk of “birthing people,” and the use of “Latinx,” Republicans are now blind to how their own behavior appears outside the bubble. Inside it, their excesses play like strength and clarity of purpose. Outside it, the same behavior looks unhinged.

Among the more recent displays of embubblement: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s short-lived plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan. This attempted resurrection of the grisly ritual — the last public execution in the United States came in 1936 — thrilled the hardcore theocon and NatCon factions of the Right, who, for reasons ranging from biblical notions of retributive justice to the conviction that a strong state must be seen wielding its power, thought a livestreamed killing was just what America needed in this, the year of our Lord 2026. The plan enjoyed spirited defenses in highly visible conservative spaces, from the erudite heights of the First Things podcast (though they eventually agreed Trump was right to cancel it) to the seedy depths of Jack Posobiec’s social media feed. [bold added]

I have been waiting for a prominent conservative outlet to note the similarity. It is progress that people are beginning to notice how similar MAGA and the woke left are, beyond the facile and lacking urge to invoke "horseshoe theory" and call it a day.

Unfortunately, it's still early days, and the extent of the bubble bursting is only going to entail the current "embubbled" side losing political power.

Yes. The current power-holders look like champions to themselves and nuts to everyone else, and that may well cost them political power. But, just as conservatives gleefully declare the death of climate change catastrophism every time a non-catatrophist wins office, only to seem puzzled when that agenda comes back full steam afterwards, so it will be the same with MAGA.

This is so because each bubble-dwelling faction is animated by anti-individualist, anti-freedom philosophical ideas that, while not based in reality, do provide them with a moral compass that they will not discard as easily as they can lose an election.

The full extent of the woke left's soul searching concerned how to return to power, not whether its animating ideas had anything to do with reality. That, too, will be the full extent of hard-core MAGA's.

It is interesting to consider that normal voters, too, may be in a bubble. Our country has enjoyed relative economic and political freedom for so long that most people take those things for granted. Our education system has, similarly, done a worse job each generation in teaching the ideas that made liberty possible or preparing minds to understand them by cultivating independent, active thinking.

Freedom does not last long if there is no faction that actively supports it. That's the reality normies don't seem to appreciate.

As to how we look to others? My own experience with both wokescold and MAGA relatives tells me that, as individuals, we look like members of the opposite "extreme" (read: collectivist) faction than that of the person we are speaking to at the moment. As a collective, I would guess that we are taken for marks, whose votes are there for the taking.

The horseshoe is an illusion. The arrow points to freedom.

History tells us that the best way to stop being treated like chumps and advance the cause of liberty is to educate oneself and others, and make it clear that one's political allegiance is up for grabs and has to be earned.

-- CAV

California's Billionaire-Drain

California's Proposition 40, a one-time wealth tax of resident billionaires is on the ballot. Economists and conservative media outlets argue, correctly that this is a terrible idea from the standpoint of the government increasing its tax revenue.

(We'll set aside our disappointment that none express any degree of moral outrage at this brazen violation of individual rights.)

Megan McArdle takes this line of argument further, considering what dueling economists are saying about the potential impact of such a measure -- and assuming in order to make their cases.

In addition to questioning assumptions about what the billionaires might do in response to such a measure, she considers what this "group of the world's most mobile people" are doing:

Several California billionaires have already announced their departures, including Peter Thiel and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. [Wealth tax proponent Gabriel] Zucman's paper notes that if some of the most prominent tech barons succeed in fleeing, revenue estimates fall to $89 billion, but then argues that there are many small-fry billionaires who escape Forbes's wealth rankings but still have to pay the tax. Adding them back in raises revenue to $115 billion.

This assumes the undetected small fry haven't done their best to exit, but why would we assume that? Why should we believe that those who loudly announced they were shifting their residency before the year began were the only people who fled ahead of the SEIU initiative?

Mike Solana, the chief marketing officer at Founders Fund (where Thiel is a partner) and founder of tech site Pirate Wires, reported speaking with 20 billionaires who would be affected by the wealth tax. They comprise about 10 percent of the state's known billionaires. All 20, including some Democrats, said they were making exit plans; three said they'd already left. You can dismiss Solana as a Thiel acolyte, but I've heard from others in those circles that most of the state's billionaires are planning their departure, if they haven't already left. [bold added]

McArdle then notes that economists aren't the only people on earth capable of making assumptions:

They probably assume that if the tax succeeds, progressives will come back for an encore. And if it fails, they'll try, try again. Those seem like sound assumptions -- sounder, in fact, than the assumption that Californians can grab 5 percent of everything the billionaires have, and the billionaires will just have to sit there and let them take it.

It is interesting to consider the idea that California's nasty threat to retroactively confiscate so much money might already be backfiring.

-- CAV

'Shy Republicans' -- but the Other Way Around?

A Daily Mail piece about the Talarico-Paxton senatorial race in Texas speaks of "shy Republicans," a term I've heard more than once before, going way back to Dubya in 2004.

The term has since been reapplied to Trump supporters, and is popping up in news media again.

This time, however, with the unpopularity of the corrupt candidate Trump chose to replace the incumbent John Cornyn, the term is being used for Republican voters who plan to vote against their party's candidate. There is speculation about whether polls are underestimating the number of Republicans who plan to vote for Talarico, but are averse to admitting as much in public:

Celebrated attorney Thomas J Henry, who [once] gave $600,000 to a pro-Paxton PAC, on Wednesday night published a video on social media endorsing Talarico. He said in the clip, which received 24,000 likes in under 24 hours, that he had met with Talarico and discussed issues at length, finding him to be 'balanced, straightforward and honest.'

'I think there are going to be many, many people that are Republicans that are going to vote for Talarico,' Henry told the Daily Mail. 'And I can tell you, as a lawyer, I have dealt with many people that are on juries that are very conservative, and people that you'd think would be very liberal, and I've seen them make decisions based on certain circumstances that are not consistent with what you think they would be based on a label.

'So I think we have to give people credit for making up their own mind.'

Will it be enough to get Talarico over the line, making him the first Democrat to represent Texas in the nation's capital in 33 years?

I am not sure so many Republicans who vote for Talarico will share Henry's enthusiasm for Talarico so much as be appalled at what an atrocious character and record Paxton has, but the note about people exercising their own judgement in private stands.

As for the reluctance, I think the below might be a fair indication of the tribalist pressure many such people will feel:

His wife warned him [lifelong Republican James Edge] against it, cautioning that they would lose friends. Indeed, they have: Some now shun him in the streets. So conservative is his Brazos County home that, after he made his declaration, the local radio station invited him on air -- and then received a barrage of hate mail.

'It was as if an earthquake shifted in my world, in the area around my home,' he told the Daily Mail. 'I would think it would be relatively uninteresting, what my position would be on this. I am a well-known Republican, and a city councilor, but our city is fairly small - it's only 100,000 people.

'The attention that this has drawn has been fascinating. I have heard from countless people: individuals that are currently elected Republicans in Brazos County; staffers throughout the state of Texas that work for Republican officeholders. And they have said, "Thank you, I agree with you 100 percent. I'm with you, and I feel the same way. I can't vote for Ken Paxton."'

'But virtually none of them have been willing to do it publicly. And I fully understand that, because of the blowback that I have experienced, which has been unlike anything I really expected.'

I once lived in Texas, but am not as familiar with the electoral math there as I am with Mississippi's: I'm not sure how much crossing over Talarico would need to win. But the Daily Mail claims the race is "neck-and-neck" and even Republican voters who simply stay home or abstain in the Paxton race will help Talarico's effort.

-- CAV

Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "The Midterm Elections: Trump's Abettors Have to Be Removed," by Peter Schwartz (Peter Schwartz):

Trump did not like how the 2020 election turned out, and tried to forcibly nullify it. What will he do about the next election whose results he does not like? He has said that his biggest regret about the 2020 election is his failure to send the National Guard to seize the voting machines. Will he rectify that failure in response to the upcoming midterm elections? Or the 2028 elections? We can't know -- but we do know that the Republicans will not defy him.

Republicans are now in thrall to Trump. They make possible his dismissal of legal constraints. The only way to neutralize Trump, then, is through a Congress controlled by Democrats. Yes, even if they are "democratic socialists." A president aided in his refusal to acknowledge the rule of law by an acquiescent Congress, is a far greater threat than legislators who want to enact socialized medicine or a ban on gasoline-powered cars.

1210 words/4 minutes

2. "The Hazard of 'The Government Knows Best'," by Jaana Woiceshyn (How to Be Profitable and Moral):

[H]uman flourishing does not mean bare economic survival and equal struggle for all. The condition of flourishing is that people are able to depend on their basic tool of survival, reason. They must be free to think, engage in any productive activity, and trade with others of their choosing, to survive and enjoy life. Thinking, producing, and trading requires freedom to choose one's work, to keep the proceedings from it and to prosper accordingly.

By limiting or abolishing that freedom -- through confiscation of property and "redistributing" it to others, trough taxation, welfare programs, and foreign aid, or through restricting trade through regulations -- a statist government undermines individuals' freedom to pursue their values and thereby their flourishing.

900 words/3 minutes

3. "'Effective Altruism' Produced the Doomers," by Harry Binswanger (Value for Value):

In today's Wall Street Journal, "The Weekend Interview" is "Why Did Technologists Become Doomers?"

It's not just the slant of the headline that's good. The interviewee, Zack Korman, is astonishing -- not just in being on the right side, not just in supplying important information about the risks of AI, but in actually showing that what caused the hysteria is a philosophy! And guess which philosophy: "effective altruism"!

920 words/3 minutes

4. "How I Solved My Writing Problems," by Jean Moroney (Thinking Directions):

In trying to follow their process, I had dropped my own judgment of whether the thing hung together logically. I was judging it based on whether I was following their procedure, not on whether it made sense to me. This is the problem that arises from focusing on rules instead of reality. In hindsight, my 15-step process, though it has a lot of merit and brings a lot of clarity, also encouraged a rule-focused approach to writing.

This was my first glimmer into the fundamental problem that has distorted my process for years.

At about the same time, I heard Peter Schwartz give a condensed overview of the writing process he taught me many years ago, and on which my writing process was based. (This was at last year's Randsday Weekend Conference, at which we'll both be speaking again in 2027.)

This time I heard him say, "You write because you have a message you want to communicate."

This sounds obvious, but it hit me like a ton of bricks.

1870 words/6 minutes

-- CAV